Letters to the Editor

Published 9:00 pm, Monday, October 28, 2002

SEATTLE SCHOOLS

'Soft' managers can give us hard problems Seattle Public Schools' recent budgetary "discoveries" could be comedic if they didn't have such a sad and dire effect upon the children and employees of the district. I truly envision all of the senior financial managers standing in a circle and pointing to the left when asked who is responsible for this mess.

As a former CEO, this debacle once again confirms my suspicions that too many managers of fiscal responsibility today are incapable of true hands-on management and delving into the details of running a school district or a business, knowing that they are fully accountable for the results. Instead, too many employers prefer to appoint "feel-good" generalists who prefer the bigger-picture school of management and inevitably end up with the situation in which the Seattle School District finds itself.

And how do these "soft" managers deal with their shortcomings? Either they admit it is their fault and throw themselves on the mercy of their employers, knowing full well that sympathy extends one's employment, or by simply stating that, "It wasn't my fault." If this mess isn't the fault of the financial department heads, whose fault is it?

If an institution doesn't require competence and accountability in its financial management and the ultimate leader, it is doomed to mediocrity at best. But it usually results in the pickle it deserves and causes unnecessary hardship on those whom it is intended to serve.

Current approach obviously not working I am glad to hear that the Seattle School Board is asking hard questions and that other school officials are considering a no-confidence vote on Superintendent Joseph Olchefske. My confidence in his leadership has already gone. As a parent of a child at an alternative elementary school, I have been dismayed by his ongoing attack on the idea that Seattleites should have real choices in styles of teaching and educational assessment. Most of us don't want Olchefske's cookie-cutter accountancy approach that reduces the meaning of learning to a monotonous stream of numbers.

The one benefit that might have been assumed to derive from putting an accountant in charge would have been decent bookkeeping. It's embarrassing but also devastating for the district that he hasn't even been able to get that right. Seattle deserves more choices, and certainly a better choice than this.

County needs to do what rest of us do: Cut costs King County is projecting a 2003 budget shortfall of $51 million, and all county departments funded by our tax dollars are panicked again. The shortfall is the news, while the county is quite silent on the fact that the budget is growing in 2003 by 8.5 percent. The projected budget is $3.18 billion, while last year's budget was $2.93 billion.

By my math, I see an increase in one year of $250 million to the budget. This proposal comes at a time when every business and household budget is either being cut or maintained at 2002 levels. This is not a time for any budget increases.

When is King County going to get it? Enough with the increases! Prioritize and cut. Stop the irresponsible spending habits and cut like any other business would have to with a shortfall of revenues. While the economy and markets have tanked over the past three years, the county budget has grown more than 27 percent or more than 8 percent a year. Enough is enough.

Make a choice between failed past, bright future Monorail opponents continue to grasp at straws trying to confuse and distract voters. Listen to what Ron Sims, Henry Aronson and their ilk have been saying. At first they complain that not taxing new-car buyers is a tax loophole for the rich. A week later they fear the monorail folks will change legislation in order to double-dip auto dealers and auto buyers for new-car purchases. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

Another superfluous argument is that we need to spend money to open up the "chokepoints" in our highway system, not waste it on a monorail. That makes sense: Let's free up the bottlenecks so we can get to bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-5 faster.

Come on. We can see through Sims' and Aronson's shallow political self-interests. It's time for Seattle to make a choice between our failed past of laying down concrete and our potential to lead the nation with innovative public transportation. We're not talking about Ballard to West Seattle (more opponent slander); we're talking about the beginning of something we can be proud of for generations to come.

Let's make a difference. Vote one more time for the monorail. This time it counts.

Jon LisbinSeattle

TIMBER

Surplus production comes from outside United States The story about Weyerhaeuser closing mills in King County didn't make clear that the surplus production of timber and timber products is not in the United States. We import 35 percent of our lumber from Canada and various forms of wood from Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Scandinavia and Siberia. Our shortfall doubled in the past decade because logging in federal forests has been virtually stopped.

In the 1980s, the Olympic National Forest annually harvested about 250 million board feet of timber, which is less than it grew. No national forest ever harvested more timber than it grew. In the past 40 years, the net growth of timber in the nation, including on private land, exceeded harvest every year. In the past decade, net growth in federally managed forests exceeded harvest by 55 percent. Last year, the harvest in the Olympic National Forest was 10 million board feet.

National forests were established to provide a reliable supply of timber for the United States. National parks were for recreation. But national forests are now managed for the benefit of certain species, none of which are mankind, for a $3 billion-a-year firefighting industry and for TV fans of forest fires.

Is it too late to ask queen to take us back? With the elections fast approaching, I invite all voters to support the Tory Party, the oldest party in America. When we assume control, we will immediately send an emissary to the queen. We will admit that taxation with representation is no better than the other kind. We will admit that we are incapable of governing ourselves. We will ask to be taken back as a colony.

If the queen turns us down, perhaps in horror, we will deliver the same message to the last remaining colonial power, Israel. We are already sending our tax dollars there and often see them at work. Let's hope that Israel treats us as well as it treats the Palestinians.

Dave ThomasBellevue

UTILITIES

Apartment dweller not happy with billing system I have to laugh every time I read a letter in the paper from some homeowner complaining about utilities. Try being a renter in an apartment complex with third-party billing.

Third-party billing involves the landlord being reimbursed by tenants for utilities. I live in a complex where the bill we receive comes from a company in Dallas, Texas. We do not have individual water meters and we are not allowed to see the bill the landlord receives. There is a complicated formula used to add on more to units with multiple occupants, while reducing the charges for single renters; however, it is hardly ever used in the case where I live, since the landlord doesn't have a manager for the property.

In point of fact, when I complained to the landlord about several units with more than one person, he attempted to create harassment for me by telling other tenants of my complaint. So I have reluctantly learned not to complain. The bill for my 250-square-foot studio apartment is now averaging $40 a month.

To put this into context, imagine an entire city block of homeowners being told that the utilities bill they receive would be based not on an individual meter or use program, but the total cost to the block, divided by the number of houses. That is exactly how our utilities bills are now configured.

The Seattle City Council is having Seattle Public Utilities "study" the problem. The sad fact of the matter is that we have had this system in place since November 1998 and no one in city government has acted to overturn it for a more equitable system.